


Clearing the Air

by sunshyndaisies (writergirlie)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-01
Updated: 2011-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-14 08:03:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writergirlie/pseuds/sunshyndaisies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Exactly how did Ron and Hermione clear the air after he was sent to the hospital? A missing moment set during HBP.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clearing the Air

Fifty-three.

 

That was how many natural grooves Hermione thought she had counted on the large wooden door leading to the hospital ward. She’d counted it five times since she’d got here--well, six, actually, but she had been interrupted that third time by Madam Pomfrey, who was bringing in a whimpering first year suffering an unfortunate breakout of the chicken pox.

 

In any case, she’d been here for a while, staring at the grain of the wood until she’d begun to make out shapes and patterns, all the while unable to muster a single ounce of Gryffindor courage to do what she had come here to do in the first place.

 

It was, in a word, pathetic.

 

“Miss Granger, are you still out here? Why, you’ve been standing there for nearly half an hour!”

 

Hermione nearly came out of her skin--first, when she heard Madam Pomfrey’s voice behind her, and then again when her books went sliding out of her arms and landed on the stone floor in dull thuds that echoed off the walls.

 

“Oh,” she said, “have I?”

 

She cringed inwardly. Nice answer, that. She bent down and began to pick up her books to avoid Madam Pomfrey’s eyes.

 

“Are you all right, dear?” said Madam Pomfrey. Hermione could tell from her voice that she was surveying her with great curiosity.

 

“Yes, just fine, thanks.” Hermione had tried to say the words as cheerfully as she could, but she overshot it and they ended up coming out in a sort of unnatural squeak. It seemed she was doing a lot of that lately. Clearly, she’d have to do something about it.

 

“You’re here to see Weasley, aren’t you?”

 

Hermione fixed her eyes on the binding of her _Advanced Runes: Decoding the Uncodable_ book. She could see from her periphery, though, that Madam Pomfrey was staring intently at her.

 

“Er... yes. You see, he’s... um... yes.”

 

The matron seemed to think for a moment, then sniffed at the air. “Well go on, then,” she said, finally pushing the heavy door open and nodding towards the ward. “You know the rules. Visitors have only an hour. You don’t want to waste any more time out here, do you?”

 

“No, I... I suppose not...”

 

She took in a slow, deliberate breath and meant to release it, but somehow forgot until the air pressed painfully against her lungs.

 

“He’s awake.”

 

“I-I’m sorry?”

 

Madam Pomfrey had a strange smile on her face, a mixture of amusement and... was that sympathy? Hermione felt her cheeks grow hot, but she didn’t really know why.

 

“Weasley,” said Madam Pomfrey. “He’s only pretending to be asleep.”

 

She nodded towards him, and sure enough, Ron was lying down on his bed, back to the door, his snores just loud enough that she knew they had to be deliberate.

 

“Well, maybe he doesn’t want any visi-”

 

“Nonsense!” said Madam Pomfrey, who practically bristled at the thought that Hermione had been about to voice. She recovered quickly, however, and cleared her throat. “You’ve twenty-three minutes left, Miss Granger.” She leaned in close and smiled that strange smile of hers again. “I suggest you use them wisely.”

 

She hurried off to tend to the poor, itching first year, and Hermione was now left alone, her arms aching from the heavy books she was carrying and her stomach turning over with the sort of dread that she seemed to be feeling with far more frequency these days.

 

She knew exactly what the dread meant, of course. The trouble was, Ron didn’t seem to, and this fact now bothered her to the extent that it never really had before.

 

Ron let out a particularly laughable grunt-and-whistle combination that would have fooled few, and she couldn’t help but laugh.

 

“I know you’re faking, Ron.”

 

“Hermione?”

 

He turned over slowly, deliberately, then sprang upwards when he saw it was her, his mouth curving into a grin.

 

“Sorry, I thought you were Lavender.”

 

Hermione stopped laughing. “Well, thanks.”

 

Sensing he had offended her, he sputtered, “I... I just meant...”

 

“I know what you meant.”

 

She bit the inside of her cheek before she could go any further. She hadn’t come here to row with him. She clutched her books closer to her chest. Her arms were throbbing now.

 

His face softened. “D’you want to sit down?”

 

“Oh... right, yeah.”

 

He summoned a stool to his bed and levitated the books from her arms. They arched through the air smoothly but had a bit of a bumpy landing on the empty bed next to his; Hermione decided to pretend it didn’t happen and sat down beside him, setting her bag down on the floor.

 

“Are you feeling better?” she said.

 

“Bit,” he said with a shrug. Then he chuckled softly. “At least I’ve stopped throwing up.”

 

Hermione laughed. “Yes, I suppose that’s an improvement.”

 

Silence settled in again, filling the tiny space between them. Hermione cringed at how unbearably loud her breath seemed.

 

“Ron, I-”

 

“Hermione-”

 

They both laughed.

 

“Go ahead- No, you-”

 

Ron smiled. “You go.”

 

Hermione crossed her legs. Her skirt rode up an inch above her knee, and she felt the sudden impulse to pull it down, her eyes settling on the rough weave of the tweed material. It was easier than looking in his eyes.

 

God, why was this so hard?

 

“I wanted to... that is, I...”

 

The lump in her stomach was now moving fast up her body, entering her throat and making her choke slightly. She wasn’t going to be able to do this. She couldn’t, she simply couldn’t.

 

She took another breath. She had thought that it would help her gather her composure, but all it succeeded in doing was making her feel faint. She made the mistake of looking up at him, but his deliberate stare was making her all the more unnerved. All of a sudden, she felt incredibly vulnerable.

 

“I’msorryforbeingsuchaprat.”

 

The words came tumbling out of his mouth so quickly that she wasn’t quite sure she’d heard them correctly. She blinked back at him, then somehow managed to find her voice.

 

“What?”

 

“I don’t blame you for sending the canaries after me,” he said. “I wasn’t exactly... well, I reckon I would have sent them after me too.”

 

Hermione felt the familiar prickling in her eyes, but ignored it. “Ron, I... You didn’t need to say all that.”

 

“Yes I did.”

 

“I haven’t exactly been on stellar behaviour myself.”

 

“No, I s’pose you’re right about that.”

 

“Ron!!” She swatted him on the arm and laughed in spite of herself.

 

“I’m joking, I’m joking!” he said, putting his hands up in defence. “Have mercy, I’m injured, woman!”

 

“You don’t make it easy for someone to apologise, you know.”

 

He smiled. Suddenly, she forgot that she was supposed to be annoyed with him.

 

“I know.”

 

They fell silent once again, but this time, there was no awkwardness. At length, Hermione said, “Ron, can I ask you something?”

 

She thought she saw fear flit across his features for a fraction of a second, but decided a moment later that she had probably just imagined it. Maybe it was her own fear she saw reflected on his face.

 

“All right.”

 

This was her chance, and she knew it. Maybe this was even her only chance. Somewhere on their way from her brain to her mouth, however, the words got all tangled and misshapen, and came out in a question that almost entirely missed the mark.

 

“Do you really pretend to be asleep when Lavender comes over?”

 

She wondered if she was imagining things again when she saw a flicker of disappointment in his eyes. She hoped her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her.

 

“All she ever wants to talk about is where this is heading, and what sort of feelings I have for her.” He said it with disgust, but he seemed to be restraining himself for her benefit. She appreciated the effort, even as the words knifed at her.

 

“She must really care about you, then,” she said softly.

 

“Yeah, I reckon so.”

 

Absently, she tugged at her skirt again. “Well,” she said at last, “I’m glad we cleared the air, then.” She picked her bag up from the floor and got to her feet, then summoned her books to her.

 

“Oh,” he said, “yeah, me too...”

 

“I should... I’ve got things to... My hour is up. Madam Pomfrey will have a fit if she sees I’m still in here.”

 

He smiled, but she knew that smile. It was the smile he used when he was trying to cover up his disappointment over something.

 

“All right?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

She gave him a conspiratorial wink, then, after checking first to see if Madam Pomfrey was within earshot, said, “I’ll be back after dinner.”

 

This time, she knew the smile was genuine.

 


End file.
